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Every week we post a collection of the best robot photos submitted by our readers to our robots.net flickr group. Why? Because everyone likes to see cool new robots! This week's collection includes, coincidentally, several alcohol related robots. There's a drunk graffiti robot, a Taiwan Beer display robot, even a collection of flasks bearing robot artwork. There's also the usual assortment of walking, flying, and rolling robots, both real and artistic. Want to see your robot here? Post it to flickr and add it to the robots.net flickr group. It's easy! If you're not already a flickr member, it's free and easy to sign up. Read on to see the best robot photos of the week!

The Illinois Institute of Technology's Robotics Lab is working on an interesting variation of the popular quadrotor flying robot. They've added a rolling cage that allows the robot to roll along the ground as well as fly. Why would you want to do that? Because rolling requires a lot less power than flying. From the researchers:

Experimental results show that the hybrid robot can travel a distance 4 times greater and operate almost 6 times longer than an aerial only system. It also solves one of the most challenging problems in terrestrial robot design — obstacle avoidance. When an obstacle is encountered, the system simply flies over it.

The research on this project is being done by Arash Kalantari and Matthew Spenko of IIT. The lab is also working other interesting projects including perched landing of micro air-vehicles, agile non-holonomic robots, and omnidirectional rough terrain robots. See the Robotics Lab research projects page to read more about out their other robots. Read on to see video of the HyTAQ robot rolling and flying.

One of the problems with the artificial muscles commonly used in robots is their poor performance compared to biological muscles. This is an important reason why they generally have not found favor as a replacement for conventional motors. A new artificial muscle developed at the University of Texas at Dallas Nanotech Institute may change that. Researchers there, led by Ray Baughman, are working on muscles made from carbon nanotubes, twisted into yarn and filled with paraffin wax. The resulting muscles can lift 100,000 times their own weight and generate 85 time the mechanical power of natural, biological muscles. According to Baughman,

"Because of their simplicity and high performance, these yarn muscles could be used for such diverse applications as robots, catheters for minimally invasive surgery, micromotors, mixers for microfluidic circuits, tunable optical systems, microvalves, positioners and even toys."

The coiled nature of the yarn provides two additional applications. First it can twist and untwist at up to 11,500 RPM, allowing it be used in much the same way as the rubber band that powers a model airplane. Second, the yarn can be sewn into fabrics which then have macro-level properties that can change in the presence of certain chemicals, lighting conditions, or temperature levels. A paper on the latest development appeared in the 16 Nov issue of Science. Unfortunately Science is a pay-walled journal so it's not generally available yet. You can, however, read other related papers on the Nanotech Institute's publications page. You can also get a little more info from the recent UTD news release. Read on to see video of the super-muscles lifting weights and doing other cool things.

A recently published paper, titled Network Cosmology (PDF format) has demonstrated remarkable similarities in the structure and dynamics of several large scale networks that you may have heard of: the human brain, The Internet, and universe. The paper is by six researchers including Dmitri Krioukov, perhaps best known as the scientist whose four page physics paper titled "Proof of Innocence" (PDF format) was presented to the judge in court, saving Dmitri from a $300 traffic ticket. Having avoided his traffic fine, Dmitri and friends went on to demonstrate that many complex networks from the brain to the entire universe seems to be governed by similar underlying laws. To do this, they looked at the math of causal sets a representation of the quantum gravity that underlies spacetime. From the paper:

"We show that the structure of these networks in de Sitter spacetime, such as our accelerating universe, is remarkably similar to the structure of complex networks -- the brain or the Internet, for example. [...] We show that as a consequence of a simple geometric duality, the growth dynamics of complex networks and de Sitter causal sets are asymptotically identical. These findings suggest that unexpectedly similar mechanisms may shape the large-scale structure and dynamics of complex systems as different as the brain, the Internet, and the universe."

According to the researchers, the probability of the equivalence between all these complex networks being pure coincidence is very low, so there's almost certainly some fundamental law at work. It would be very interesting to identify and understand a new law of physics that affects the emergence of four-dimensional space from the quantum vacuum, the development of our brains, and the dynamics of our social network of friends. The paper contains lots of math, so we recommend against reading it while you're driving.

Every week we post a collection of the best robot photos submitted by our readers to our robots.net flickr group. Why? Because everyone likes to see cool new robots! This week's collection includes a law enforcement robot from Knoxville, a variety of robot art, some robot toys, hobby robots, and even a cat that likes robots. If you'd like to submit your robot photos, join the robots.net flickr group. If you're not already a flickr member, it's free and easy to sign up. Read on to see the best robot photos of the week!

"This paper focuses on the design methodology, implementation details, and user study evaluations of a SAR system that aims to motivate and engage elderly users in physical exercise as well as social interaction to help address the physical and cognitive healthcare needs of the growing elderly population. SAR systems equipped with such motivational, social, and therapeutic capabilities have the potential to facilitate elderly individuals to live independently in their own homes, to enhance their quality of life, and to improve their overall health."

The robot, named Bandit, is a biomimetic anthropomorphic robot, which in this case means a vaguely humanoid torso mounted on a wheeled platfrom. The robot attempts to engage the elderly person in a variety of games, some of which involve making arm gestures and asking the human to imitate them. The robot observes and offers advice as they attempt to repeat the exercise. Studies of interactions with elderly volunteers seems to support the idea that the robot can succeed at motivating exercise in way humans find enjoyable. You can learn more about the project on the UCS Interaction Lab Robot Exercise System webpage. Read on to see photos and video of Bandit in action.

We've posted more stories on robot ethics over the years than I can count. The general public and lawmakers still seem ignorant of the issues and even many roboticists still seem unclear on the import of autonomous robots that can make the decision of when to kill and who to kill without a human in the loop at all. But each day we come closer to having fully autonomous war robots. Some researchers, like Ronald Arkin, believe we can create robots that fight only for us and kill only in an ethical fashion. Other researchers, like Noel Sharkey, have warned that we shouldn't build autonomous weapons and that, if we do, they will eventually be copied and turned on us as well. A good comparison of Arkin's and Sharkey's views can be found in Part 1 and Part 2 of the Robots podcast on Robot Ethics. The latest development in this area is the publication of a 50-page report by Human Rights Watch called Losing Humanity: The Case against Killer Robots (PDF format). From the report:

Based on the threats fully autonomous weapons would pose to civilians, Human Rights Watch and IHRC make the following recommendations, which are expanded on at the end of this report:

Prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons through an international legally binding instrument.

Adopt national laws and policies to prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons.

Commence reviews of technologies and components that could lead to fully autonomous weapons. These reviews should take place at the very beginning of the development process and continue throughout the development and testing phases.

Noel Sharkey was a technical reviewer on their report and provided input. Even if it's too late to stop the development of fully autonomous robots or Apocalyptic AI, it's well worth reading this report, which covers a lot of interesting points. If not an outright ban, it's likely we'll at least seen changes to existing laws as well as new ethics requirements researchers. While we have yet to reach the point of fully autonomous killer robots, several robots are quite close, such as the Northrop Grumman X-47B, pictured above, and the Samsung semi-autonomous Techwin SGR-A1 border guard which can fire on and kill humans. If you're not up for reading the full report, read on to see the short video released by the Human Rights Initiative to summarize the content.CC licensed image of X47B from flickr user US DoD

It's almost time once again for Black Friday, the annual, post-Thanksgiving chaos of consumerism in the United States. As long as it's happening, we might as well point out a few bargains that will be of interest to robot builders. Pololu's Black Friday sale begins at midnight on Thursday. Exact details are still under wraps but based on previous years, it will be well worth checking out. Rick Stiles of Trossen Robotics let us in on the details of their sale:

Dr. Chris Chesher is a senior lecturer in Digital Cultures, and is currently conducting research into the cultures of contemporary robotics, in association with the Centre for Social Robotics at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics. His research investigates how various technologies become historically woven through social structures and cultural practices. He brings a new and interesting perspective as his approach mixes science and technology studies, media studies and ethnography in an effort to understand robotic technologies and everyday-life.